


raptorian

by kayden (kristyn)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Flashbacks Galore, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, what is chronology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 16:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16499084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristyn/pseuds/kayden
Summary: Fareeha Amari is outfitted with a new cybernetic body following a horrific Talon attack on her Army squad that took the lives of her friends and left her with nothing but a right arm. Coping is made easier with the assistance of Angela Ziegler, her childhood friend and doctor, but Fareeha's demons aren't so easily hidden, and she will stop at nothing to enact vengeance upon those who took her friends and family from her.





	raptorian

Blinding pain. Her eyes stared ahead, but she saw nothing. She only heard the voice of…

Who was it? Her mind could not focus on the speaker. Her thoughts could only zero in on… The smell. Gas.

“Fareeha. Nod if you can hear me.” The command drifted up from the murky depths of her limited perception.

Fareeha nodded. Her vision started to clear, and she realized her hearing was returning. Her heart sped up. The panic was setting in.

“Fareeha, breathe with me.” The speaker began to breathe evenly, loudly whooshing in and out with her mouth. The sound blew like a deafening hurricane, and Fareeha could not get herself to breathe like that. The speaker took no notice, instead busying herself with whatever it was she was doing, whooshing all the while.

Something was creeping in on Fareeha’s mind. She tried to move her legs, but her body was completely still, almost against her will. _Am I paralyzed?_

“Fareeha, you must listen to me.”

She opened her mouth. Couldn’t speak. _Angela_ , she tried to say. _What happened to me?_

The scene around her began to register. Debris. Broken posts and canvas lay around her. Her gaze finally shifted downward after she took in her surroundings. Her breathing sped up. She could not make sense of what she saw. A white coat covered her legs, except they didn’t. They covered her pelvis but she could not see her legs past the coat. Where they should have been, Angela knelt in a pool of blood, shakingly pouring something from a bottle onto a cloth. Her hands were slick with blood, as was the bottle.

“Fareeha, look up and breathe like I said!” Angela barked when she caught Fareeha staring.

Fareeha disobeyed and continued to gaze at the unfamiliar sight. A moment later, she felt a tremendous pain suddenly begin in her left arm. Or perhaps it had been present this entire time. She did not know. All she knew was that her arm was not there. Tattered bloody cloth from the remains of her uniform was all that hung from her shoulder.

“A-Angela…” Fareeha whispered before blacking out.

 

Fareeha stared up at the unforgiving hospital lights, the paper of the examination table crinkling under her jeans. She crunched it in her right fist, liking the way it felt. Her left arm remained in the annoying blue cast she had been forced to wear these past three weeks.

The door creaked open, and Fareeha was joined by her mother, Ana.

Ana smiled at her daughter. “How are you feeling?”

Fareeha scrunched her nose up. “Are they gonna take this thing off already?”

“Be patient, my girl. I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

Ana stepped to the side as another person came into the room. The newcomer looked to be a teenager, and wore a white lab coat that was obviously far too large for her slight figure. Her blonde hair was pulled into a high-and-tight ponytail, and she wore a nametag that read ‘Angela.’ She held a clipboard.

“Fareeha, this is Angela. She’s a bright young student doctor from here in Switzerland. She’s here to learn from us and help me develop some new technology. I thought I would introduce you two, and she could take care of your cast today.”

Angela waved. “Hello. Good to meet you.”

Fareeha frowned. “Aren’t you too young to be in med school?”

Ana glared at her. “Forgive my outspoken daughter,” she said to Angela.

Angela laughed daintily, covering her mouth. Her eyes crinkled and something in Fareeha’s heart flipped.

“It’s quite alright,” Angela said. She crossed the room and placed the clipboard on a table beside the bed, picking up a strange instrument in its place. “This is going to tickle a little bit.”

Ana leaned against the door as Angela gingerly took Fareeha’s arm in her hand.

“I’m not ticklish,” Fareeha said bluntly, looking at the floor.

“Good, then. The sound will be quite loud, but don’t let it frighten you. I’ll make a couple cuts in the cast with my saw here, and then I’ll cut through the padding with some scissors. Got it?”

Fareeha narrowed her eyes. “Have you done this before?”

“Let the girl do her job, Fareeha. And apologize,” Ana scolded in Arabic.

“Sorry,” Fareeha mumbled to Angela.

Angela smiled again. “It’s okay. Hold still, okay? It’ll be over in just a minute.”

 

Fareeha woke with an agonizing itch in her arm. She blinked into the white light of the small hospital room, trying to cast her mind into a memory that would explain the reason she was here. It crept on the edge of her consciousness, its foreboding presence suddenly striking fear into her heart, an emotion which was almost foreign to her.

Someone softly cleared their throat to her right. Her neck turned so fast to face Dr. Ziegler that it cracked.

“Angela,” Fareeha croaked.

Angela immediately crouched beside the bed, abandoning her position in the corner of the room.

“Fareeha. You are the strongest person I know. You must continue to be strong, now, okay?”

Fareeha hardly heard her. “Angela… what’s happened…?”

“We were attacked. We were waiting for our helicopter out. It was Talon, we think.”

The overwhelming itch grew stronger, this time in her legs. She looked down at her body for the first time. The hospital sheet covered her completely, but it was the strangest sight. Because she couldn’t see her feet sticking up underneath. In fact, her legs seemed to be missing entirely.

The fear in her heart came to a head when finally the full realization occurred to her. “Dear god,” she whispered. She clenched the sheet with her right hand, holding it close to her body. She didn’t want to peer underneath. She wanted to stretch out her legs, to curl her toes, to feel her knobby knees and touch the scar from when she tore ligament in high school basketball and needed surgery. This could not have happened to her. It shouldn’t have. She would rather be dead. “Dear god,” she could only repeat. She would rather be dead.

Angela took Fareeha’s hand in hers. “Fareeha. You saved my life. I will always be indebted to you.”

The memories slowly washed in like the shore. It had been a set up. The copter had been rigged. At the last moment, Fareeha had pulled Angela out of the aircraft and threw her a ways away.

Fareeha cleared her throat. “Are you okay?”

Angela looked at her in disbelief. “My god, Fareeha, of course I’m okay. I’m alive because of you.”

Fareeha feared the answer to her next question. “And my squadron?”

Angela met her eyes. “We were the only survivors.”

“I see.” This had to be a dream. A nightmare. How was she meant to avenge her fallen friends, her family, without the use of her legs? She could hardly think. Her mind was full of a low buzzing as she struggled to process her new reality. The panic found its way back to the forefront of her mind. She let go of Angela’s hand. Clenched and unclenched her remaining limb as the cacophony of white noise continued to crescendo inside her head.

“You have options, Fareeha,” Angela said quietly after a moment.

“It does not appear that way.”

“I have the technology to outfit you with new limbs. Cybernetic limbs.” Her eyes lit up. “I can help you, Fareeha. I can save your life just as you saved mine.”

Fareeha’s mind spun. Cybernetic limbs? “New… new limbs,” she mumbled. The pain crept up with a vengeance, overtaking her. Her mind buzzed louder and she suddenly felt violently ill. The pain was inescapable.

She leaned over and retched.

 

“How does it feel?” Angela asked from her side of their shared room. She leaned back in her chair and looked over at the younger girl.

Fareeha shut the door and swiped her tongue over her teeth for the hundredth time that day. “Kinda gross. But in a good way.”

Angela nodded knowingly. “That’s how I felt when I got my braces off.”

Fareeha smiled. “You had braces too?” She sat down on her bed.

“Yeah. I got them when I was thirteen and had them for almost two years.” She swiveled around to fully face Fareeha, and brought her legs up to her chest.

“So you’re really just like a normal kid, then, huh?” Fareeha asked, amused.

Angela laughed. “And what would give you the impression that I’m not?”

“You’re a seventeen-year-old doctor.”

“So? I have a passion. Lots of seventeen-year-old girls have a passion.”

Fareeha kicked off her shoes. “Yeah, like horses and boys and shopping.”

“That’s kind of a sexist generalization.”

“And you use phrases like ‘sexist generalization.’”

Angela reddened. “Well, I educate myself. That’s okay.”

“You’re basically an adult, Angela.”

Angela bristled. “I am not.” She turned around again and continued working on her laptop, pointedly plugging her earbuds in and sticking them in her ears.

Fareeha frowned. Had she said something wrong? She figured that would be a compliment. She herself got treated like a kid any chance her mom, Gabe, Jack, Reinhardt, and all the other adults in Overwatch could get. It was maddening. She only wanted to be taken seriously. One day, she hoped to follow in her mother’s footsteps, but that would never happen if nobody respected her. She was constantly jealous of Angela’s outright ability to immediately be treated as an adult. Maybe it came with being a teenager.

Fareeha hated being twelve.

 

Fareeha never knew Genji Shimada particularly well.

While on winter break in her senior year at university, she visited her family at Overwatch headquarters before spending Christmas with her father in Canada.

Fareeha had meticulously typed up and sent her mother her entire schedule, including flight times (allowing for delays and layovers), activities for the week she would spend at headquarters (allowing for weather), and the flight and cab information for her trip to Canada.

Her mother texted back a single, “K.”

As Fareeha arrived at headquarters, her scarf wrapped tightly around the lower half of her face and neck, nobody was there to greet her. She was annoyed but not surprised. She texted her mom. “I’m here??”

She pocketed her phone and pulled her suitcase behind her, heading for the freight elevator. This would be easier than lugging her things all the way to the front of the building to take the regular elevator. She was on break, and therefore allowed to be lazy.

Before she could press any buttons, she saw a long shadow emerge from around the corner. _Finally someone greets me_ , she thought, but as she stepped out to meet whoever it was, he was suddenly a lot closer than she thought he was. She started, flailing backwards for a moment before regaining her balance.

“Jesus, you scared me.” She tried laughing it off but the young man in front of her did not laugh with her. She cleared her throat.

He looked to be about her age. She wasn’t sure. He was kind of slouching. He wore a frumpy sweatshirt and she couldn’t quite tell what he was wearing on his legs. Armor? A doctor’s mask covered the lower half of his face, underneath a criss-cross of white scars. Fareeha tried not to stare.

He sulked past her, looking straight into her eyes all the while.

“Going up?” she asked, trying to fight the awkwardness of the whole encounter.

He nodded.

The freight elevator moved slowly. Much, much too slowly.

“We haven’t met, then. I’m Fareeha, Captain Amari’s daughter,” Fareeha said, glancing at the young man.

He looked across the elevator at her. “Genji.”

“Are you a Blackwatch recruit?” she asked.

He nodded. She knew it. Gabe had an incessant habit of picking up weirdos.

When they reached the entrance hall, Genji took off without a word.

“Well, see you later,” she mumbled. She rolled her suitcase behind her, figuring she could say hi to everyone before she brought her stuff up to her room.

She made it to the lounge and was surprised to find only Angela there, poised on a chair, hanging stockings.

Fareeha set her things down. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

The moment she spoke, Angela yelped in surprise, teetering backwards on the chair. Fareeha darted forward, helping the other woman reach the ground in a less impactful manner. As Fareeha’s hands grazed over Angela’s body, she noticed she’d gotten a lot thinner than the last time they’d seen each other.

Angela’s face was bright red. “My god, you frightened me.”

Fareeha chuckled. “My apologies. Am I here early, then?”

Angela nodded, smoothing her blouse. Something seemed to occur to her, as she paused her work and widened her eyes. “Oh, uh, let me take your things to your room.”

“There’s no need for that, Angela.”

“Oh, but there is.” Angela hurried to the door, taking Fareeha’s bags on the way out.

Fareeha laughed. “Good lord, Angela, what kind of experiment are you conducting in my room that you forgot to clean up?”

Angela cursed as she hustled along. They stepped into the freight elevator. “Am I really that easy to read?” she asked between breaths as the elevator doors shut on them.

“A little.”

They got out and raced to the door at the end of the hall, to the room they had shared in their youth.

Angela got there first, slipping in and shutting the door in Fareeha’s face.

“Let me in, Ziegler.”

“No!”

Fareeha opened the door.

Angela sheepishly stood beside it. “Right. It doesn’t lock.”

Fareeha glanced around at all the equipment. “Oh. Wow.” A robotic, lifesize mannequin stood dead center, hanging on a line that was connected to a series of monitors that seemed to be checking vitals.

She turned to Angela. “What… were you doing?”

Angela sighed and sat down on Fareeha’s bed. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“Well, that makes me suspicious.” She sat down beside her.

“There is a young man Gabe hired recently. Genji Shimada.”

The image of the brooding, slouching figure from the elevator flashed in Fareeha’s mind. “Oh, I think I met him already.”

Angela raised her eyebrows. “Did you, now? He was supposed to stay in his room until the party tonight.”

“Where’d Gabe find that guy, anyway?”

“He was helping us with intelligence on his family’s illegal movement in Japan. Whatever his reasons were for doing so, I’m not positive.” Angela paused. Thought. “But he had… an incident. His family must have discovered his betrayal, because his brother attacked him.”

Fareeha remembered the scars on his face.

Angela continued. “We flew him out as soon as we could. I barely managed to save him.” She cleared her throat. “Um, well, I’ve been learning a lot more about cybernetics and genetics since then.”

Fareeha put two and two together. That hadn’t been armor on his legs. “So hold on--you gave him cybernetics?”

She nodded, a hint of pride gleaming in her eyes. “Fully functioning limbs that send signals to the brain and everything.” Her face fell ever so slightly. “It’s not perfect, though. He often gets phantom pain.”

Fareeha cocked her head. “Phantom pain?”

Angela nodded. “He feels as though his old limbs are still there. It’s part of his biology; he’s not a fool. He knows they’re gone. But sometimes his body doesn’t. His body wants to behave as though there are limbs there, when there are none. Causes tremendous discomfort.  And pain.”

There was a pause as Angela looked down at her hands.

Fareeha gestured to all the equipment. “So what exactly is all this, anyway?”

“Testing new technology. Your mother ordered me to give it a rest for the holidays, but I’m about to hit a new stride. I can’t stop now. Genji’s tech is outdated. I can improve it.” She fiddled with a hole in her jeans. “He deserves that much.”

Fareeha rested her hand on Angela’s. “I think my mother is right. You’re allowed to take a break.”

“Genji doesn’t get a break from this. He’s in constant pain, and there’s nothing I can do to alleviate it.”

Fareeha took a good look at Angela. The bags under her eyes were dark and heavy. She suspected she hadn’t been eating well, either. Fareeha would wager the older woman was spending nights here with no rest, only research.

“You are doing so much, Angela. You need a break.”

She shook her head. “I’m not doing enough. I can’t learn fast enough. Every day I spend with no progress is another day Genji spends in pain.”

Fareeha brought Angela in, embracing her as Angela began to cry softly. When she had cried herself out, her breathing slowed and Fareeha realized she had fallen asleep in her arms.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a good chunk of this story already written, and figured it's finally time to post it after a year of working on it! It went through a MAJOR upheaval with the addition of Moira to the lore, which is the main reason it took me a while. Stupid Moira, existing.
> 
> I will try to keep a regular schedule of bi-weekly updates, depending on interest!


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